


Sins of the Father

by HinnyBellarkeSwan



Series: Riverdale Perspectives [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017) RPF
Genre: Developing Relationship, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Father-Son Relationship, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 17:29:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17585201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HinnyBellarkeSwan/pseuds/HinnyBellarkeSwan
Summary: FP watches his son fall in love with Betty Cooper and prays the Sins of the father don't break his son. From season one to mid-season two.





	Sins of the Father

1.  
Archie had mentioned a Betty. The name was familiar, one that his boy had spoken of as a kid, he was sure of it. He couldn’t put a face to the name but his sons tale-tell avoidance of her subject entirely told him enough. 

Then he found out the useless sheriff had dragged his boy into the station. He was angry, barely registering Red and his dad, or the pretty blonde hovering in the periphery. Until his son, the one piece of family he had left, stopped him with a firm hand, tears swimming in eyes identical to his own. 

He remembers gulping, realizing this was only further pushing the boy away. He promises to give his son what he wants, it’s the only thing his drunken mind can do to get Jughead to look at him as anything more than a useless, haggard shell of a man. 

As he walked to the truck and pulled himself into it he turned to watch his boy. That’s when he noted the blonde. She cupped his son's face and he watched, shock coursing through him, as his stoic son leaned into the comfort before taking her hand and leading her away from the police station, away from him, toward Fred’s place. 

His son had a girl, and he didn’t know anything about her or anything at all because he had fallen into the Jones grave, addiction and the Serpents. Food for thought. 

2\. 

The door opens, after a crazy night of throwing three snooping teens, including his old pals son, out of his bar. There, in the doorway is his son, behind him is the same girl he vaguely remembers from the police station incident. 

Then Jughead introduces her as she steps into the light and it’s like entering a time capsule. He is seventeen again, watching a blonde girl shed her serpent skin for a Northside bastard to get her ticket out. Betty Cooper, Ali’s daughter. She’s the mirror of her mother, though she carries herself much differently than the Ali he remembers. 

She shakes his hand and mostly stays quiet, a few questions aside. They ask about Jason, the one thing he hoped his son would never find out about. His son asks him if he did it if he killed the boy, one nearly the same age as him. It stings more than he thought it would, that his boy could think he would, then again, he hadn’t given him much positive influence lately either. The blonde watches him, but stays close to Jughead, seeming to hover, when they leave she takes his son’s offered hand. 

A few minutes later he glances up, out the window and freezes. His son stands there, in the glow of the old street lamp, Ali’s girl standing close, speaking and cradling his boys face in her hands. Whatever she says has his boy smiling softer than FP ever remembers seeing, then he leans in and plants one on her. 

There, in that glow, FP sees the first of many things about his sons future that he would miss out and vows to himself that he was really and truly going to do it, get sober, so that his son could come home, he could watch him come and go on dates with this girl, get under Ali’s skin when he drops him off, the whole nine yards. 

3.  
Betty Cooper is as persistent as her mother was at her age. He gets off the phone and knows that won’t be the last time he hears from her. He hopes his son doesn’t react too badly when she leads him into the party, she was good for him. 

Of course, Jughead is a Jones, so things go to hell, but he does something he can be proud of for once by making his son turn around, telling him to find the girl and make things right, even as he sees himself at eighteen, bleeding and broken from running the gauntlet, all chance at a scholarship and a future outside of this hell hole gone and his old self with it. The only way he can support Gladys and the baby, this boy, was if he did the initiation, so he did, and it ruined his life. 

He hoped as he watched his son swipe at the blood dripping from the cut to his cheek, that he would never have to watch his son run the gauntlet. The boy had a chance to get out, he had a good girl, Red, Freddie, he needed to hold onto that, not push them away as he had done when his life went to hell. 

He thinks, for once, as he watches a blonde ponytail emerge from the house, being led by his son, that he did the right thing. That he was actually a father tonight, even if he was mildly hungover and gatecrashing a high school rager at his old friends' house. 

4\. 

He’s been sober a week when his son starts dropping in for breakfast before school. Freddie must be telling him that he’s been showing up for work, and he wants to see for himself, so FP lets him.

Another week sober and his son comes in carrying donuts and coffee, only to spot him and nearly drop both. He makes a joke about FP being body snatched, only for the father to smirk at his son and give the answers he knows his boy wants to hear. He can see the hope blooming in his sons' eyes and he feels less like shit, even if the withdrawals suck ass. 

He had read his sons' work. It was terrifying how close he and the Cooper girl were to the truth, to the answers. He knows his son, he won’t stop by warning from him, so he holds it up and asks if he’s allowed to ask questions. The tips of his ears turn pink when he asks who he and Betty think killed Jason. 

The answer Jughead gives is almost missed, awed as FP is watching his son acting so love-struck. He tells his boy that the town is a mixture of both good and evil, the famous gray area, thinking to himself that he too falls into that category. 

He listens as his boy tells him more about his life now. The school paper, life at Fred and Archie’s. Small, inconsequential details, but more than he has received from the boy since Gladys had taken Jelly and fled. Then the boy slips up, and brings up Betty, and calls her his girlfriend. 

FP had known, of course, that the two were dating, but the fact that Jughead let it slip in front of him, and then proceeded to spill a few more things about her, let him know that he was choosing to trust his father with the small things he was giving him. Betty, editing his work, Betty hanging out and studying with him and Red after school. Walking home together talking about the same old movies FP used to take him to see at the drive-in. 

FP wonders, as he watches his speak if he has realized that the Cooper girl had gotten under and around every wall his son had ever put up. He wonders if the boy realizes he’s in love. 

5\. 

He watches his son stare at Betty as she appears in her silver dress, looking nothing like her mother and smiling at his son. The rest of the dinner goes to shit, but he keeps that image tucked away in his mind. 

It is rivaled by the image of his son glancing up at the girl waiting under the clear umbrella as he speaks. He knows, even as he says the words, that his stubborn boy wouldn’t leave. He would break his own pride and ask Freddie to camp out on his floor until he was eighteen before he left. He could see it in the boys' eyes, even as FP offered him the one thing Jughead had wanted for months. 

It was then that FP realized, as his son slid out of the car and climbed the steps to Betty, that his son had another family. A family he had built himself, and one that had given him more than his blood family ever had and damn if that wasn’t a punch in the gut. 

The blonde places her hand on the arm his son proffers, a move he did not get from FP and his son leans down to whisper something in her ear, making her grin, before he pecks her cheek. He drives away, knowing that Toledo, the full family, was a pipe dream. He could run, he should run, but he wouldn’t leave the boy here, not with Blossom still at large. 

6\. 

He knew his son loved Betty, what he didn’t know was if she loved him in return. The answer comes after he is accused of, admitted to under duress, and then been cleared of the death of Jason Blossom. 

He sees the newspaper in Keller’s boys pocket, asks for it as he passes by, and the boy slides it through the bars. Jughead sure picked a hell of a girl, he decides, as he sees the title in bold under the papers insignia. 

She’s advocating for his innocence, his forgiveness, on the side of town that hates everything he stands for. He knows that she loves him then, why else would she defend him so brazenly. It reminds him, hilariously enough, of her mother at that age. Alice was a force to be reckoned with when she had an idea in her head. Even if she turned her back on the Serpents, her daughter was upholding their laws. She wasn’t letting his boy stand alone. 

Pride for his boy once again washes over him. In a life that both his parents had made a mess of, somehow the boy grew up right and managed to land the daughter of Alice Cooper herself. 

The girl was a spitfire in her own way, hidden behind the innocent smile, but she had fangs, and she was barring them against an attack on his family, his boy, in the piece and he hopes she doesn’t pay the price. 

He knows, either way, that he is going away. He knows that as long as he doesn’t snitch his son will be protected at Southside high and on the Southside. It pains him to know he has left his son no choice but to accept some form of life with the Serpents, but there is the chance that the boy won’t go through the whole initiation. He hopes Betty can keep him from doing so. 

7.

He sees them, front row and center of his courtroom, his sons' hands wringing in his lap. Betty places on hand on top of his and they stop moving. The teens share a look before Betty points him out. Father and son share eye contact before Jughead is glancing across the aisle. 

There is Cheryl Blossom. He was shocked when the lawyer told him the girl had asked to speak. He wouldn’t be surprised if she damned him to hell, but twenty minutes later she is saying it wasn’t his fault, that he shouldn’t pay for the crime her father committed when he killed his son. That his role was nothing to that of her fathers. 

The court jargon goes over his head, but he stands as the judge leaves and feels a hand fall on his shoulder. He turns to see his son shaking, biting his lip. “Is that a win?” 

“It’s a delay so yeah dad, it’s a win.” Then he is being tugged into his sons' arms. So different from the last time he hugged his boy. Then, he had been drunk, drowning in the thoughts of what he had done and the fears of what could still happen. 

Over his son’s shoulder, he registers Betty, hands clasped in front of her, a small smile on her face. She meets his eyes and her smile widens when he mouths a quiet thank you. He had no idea why, but something told him she had played a huge role in getting him here, in keeping his son afloat. 

She gives him a nod, and then his son is pushed back. He is led away, but not before he sees his son whisper something in Betty’s ear before sweeping her off her feet and twirling in a circle, joy, and hope written clearly in the lines of his typically stoic face. 

FP’s heart leaps, watching them. His son may be a snake now, but he had quite the partner. 

+1.

Riverdale had gone to Hell. That is what his son told him, what he and Red had told him again on their visit. So when he gets out it is no surprise that his son is wearing his Serpent skin and waiting for him on the other side of the prison gate. What does surprise him is who’s car they are driving, and who is standing at the front of it. 

But he ignores her for the moment to tug his boy into his arms again, relishing in the feeling of it all. The freedom. He greets Betty, who gives him her pretty smile, then he faces her. The girl from his past. 

She goads him and he indulges her. The kids flinch at their banter but they all pile into the Cooper station wagon and he sees, in the rearview mirror, his son place an arm along the seat behind Betty, her fingers tangled with the hand, not around her shoulders. His sons' fingers slip into the ends of her ever-present ponytail and play with the hair idly, causing the girls' eyes to slide shut. 

Not even ten minutes in and he glances behind him to see her eyes closed, breathing evenly, head resting on his son’s shoulders. His son is holding her as close as the seatbelts would allow, easily slouching slightly for her so that she can lean comfortably. Jughead’s eyes dart from her to the window and then back to the girl. 

His eyes meet Ali’s in the rearview, her lips pursed at the sight. Then, to his surprise, she shrugs, a small smile replacing the slight frown and he knows, she may hate that his boy is a Jones, may hate that he is a Serpent now, but even she can’t deny that his boy loves her little girl. 

Betty Cooper had saved him from a life in prison, he knew somehow, that he had her to thank for his freedom. She had given him a gift even better than that, however, by loving his boy. By giving Jughead everything he and his wife hadn’t. Those friends of theirs and the girl sleeping on his boy's shoulder were his family. 

Betty Cooper had taught his boy how to love, lowered his walls, and it was thanks to her that he had a chance to be a dad, he was damned if he wasn’t going to take it. He wanted to be a better father. 

FP wanted to be there when these two inevitably got hitched. Wanted his son to show him the ring, twitching in his seat across the table in Pop’s. Wants to see them graduate. Want’s to watch his son marry the girl of his dreams. Wants to be the first, maybe the second, to receive a signed copy of the book that gets his son out of Riverdale, out of the Serpents and into a good life. He wants to be there, he wants that to happen for his son the way it never could have for him.


End file.
